Vegetation and inundation characteristics of waterbird breeding sites in the Murray–Darling Basin, Australia

Context. The Murray–Darling Basin serves as a crucial habitat for aggregating waterbirds; however, decades of large-scale regulation of rivers and water resources have adversely affected waterbird breeding in the Basin. Aims. To understand the characteristics of wetlands that attract and support aggregating waterbirds, focusing on identifying environmental conditions conducive to waterbird breeding. Methods. In total, 52 wetland sites across the Murray–Darling Basin, with high waterbird abundances, were identified, of which 26 supported waterbird breeding. Classification models were developed using temporally static and dynamic environmental datasets to discern wetland characteristics associated with waterbird breeding. Key results. Analyses showed that wetlands supporting waterbird breeding contained a maximum inundated area of ‘other shrublands’ exceeding 3.635 km2 and variation in normalised difference vegetation index, possibly reflective of a ‘boom and bust’ ecological response. Conclusions. Understanding the habitat requirements of wetlands to prompt waterbird breeding is critical for effective environmental water management and conservation strategies. Implications. Targeted wetland management and environmental water allocation to support waterbird breeding populations in the Murray–Darling Basin is essential for continued waterbird breeding. There is a need for continued research to refine management strategies and ensure the long-term sustainability of waterbird populations in the face of ongoing environmental challenges

Coi vecchi padri in casa…ed il focolare spento… Noi donne andammo sui campi e nelle ‘industrie’… per un tozzo di pane

This essay studies the work of women on the other side of the front. By studying the papers of judicial and administrative records kept in the Record Office of Lecce, the trials report the female manifestations of protest in various towns of Terra d’Otranto: women condemned for defending the poor conditions in which they were forced to live. They were the great protagonists in the fight against hunger and lack of bread, which damaged the health of their sons and their old father

1917, l’anno “impossibile”

The agitations of the period of the war were a protest with an anti-militarist character which marked the beginning of a popular insurrection that involved, for a week, all the regions of Italy. The period was characterized by a profound unease which had both economic and social causes: in 1914-15 there were many clashes between citizens in favor of intervention and those against it. During the years of the war the spontaneous protests involved almost exclusively women and children. The defining aspect of the protest was a moral revolt against injustice: in the countryside against the local authorities, in the towns against the government, speculators and shopkeepers and against all those who did not seem to be paying the price of the war. The length of the war produced a greater awareness of rights: in relation to sacrifices, the people demanded a broader social equality and the end of privileg

Scale, evidence, and community participation matter: lessons in effective and legitimate adaptive governance from decision making for Menindee Lakes in Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin

Rivers and their interdependent human communities form social-ecologically complex systems that reflect basin scale functionally but are often governed by spatially mismatched governance systems. Accounting for this complexity requires flexible adaptive governance systems supported by legitimacy in decision-making processes. Meaningful community dialogue, information exchange, transparency, and scientific rigor are essential to this process. We examined failings in the adaptive governance of the Menindee Lakes system, a major Australian wetland system on the Barka/Darling River of the Murray-Darling Basin. Ecological sustainability of the Menindee Lakes was a casualty of a top-down governance, driven by the New South Wales Government in pursuit of “water savings” for the Murray-Darling Basin, a large scale, federally influenced region. We used quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze long-term social-ecological impacts and stakeholder perceptions of adaptive governance. State and federal government agencies failed basic processes of adaptive governance, ignoring local environmental sustainability in pursuit of basin scale objectives at great cost to governments, communities, humans, and non-humans. This resulted in the development of an ineffective, technocratic solution that lacked community input, leading to a complete loss of support by local communities, including traditional owners. We emphasize the importance of elements of scale in adaptive governance projects, if such projects are going to be effective and legitimate with consequences of coarse commitments to large spatial scale political and environmental objectives

Magnetic long-range order induced by quantum relaxation in single-molecule magnets

Can magnetic interactions between single-molecule magnets (SMMs) in a crystal establish long-range magnetic order at low temperatures deep in the quantum regime, where the only electron spin-fluctuations are due to incoherent magnetic quantum tunneling (MQT)? Put inversely: can MQT provide the temperature dependent fluctuations needed to destroy the ordered state above some finite Tc, although it should basically itself be a T-independent process? Our experiments on two novel Mn4 SMMs provide a positive answer to the above, showing at the same time that MQT in the SMMs has to involve spin-lattice coupling at a relaxation rate equaling that predicted and observed recently for nuclear spin-mediated quantum relaxation.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Dark-Bright Soliton Bound States in a Microresonator

The recent discovery of dissipative Kerr solitons in microresonators has facilitated the development of fully coherent, chip-scale frequency combs. In addition, dark soliton pulses have been observed in microresonators in the normal dispersion regime. Here, we report bound states of mutually trapped dark-bright soliton pairs in a microresonator. The soliton pairs are generated seeding two modes with opposite dispersion but with similar group velocities. One laser operating in the anomalous dispersion regime generates a bright soliton microcomb, while the other laser in the normal dispersion regime creates a dark soliton via Kerr-induced cross-phase modulation with the bright soliton. Numerical simulations agree well with experimental results and reveal a novel mechanism to generate dark soliton pulses. The trapping of dark and bright solitons can lead to light states with the intriguing property of constant output power while spectrally resembling a frequency comb. These results can be of interest for telecommunication systems, frequency comb applications, ultrafast optics and soliton states in atomic physics

Universal symmetry-breaking dynamics for the Kerr interaction of counterpropagating light in dielectric ring resonators

Spontaneous symmetry breaking is an important concept in many areas of physics. A fundamentally simple symmetry-breaking mechanism in electrodynamics occurs between counterpropagating electromagnetic waves in ring resonators, mediated by the Kerr nonlinearity. The interaction of counterpropagating light in bidirectionally pumped microresonators finds application in the realization of optical nonreciprocity (for optical diodes), studies of PT-symmetric systems, and the generation of counterpropagating solitons. Here, we present comprehensive analytical and dynamical models for the nonlinear Kerr interaction of counterpropagating light in a dielectric ring resonator. In particular, we study discontinuous behavior in the onset of spontaneous symmetry breaking, indicating divergent sensitivity to small external perturbations. These results can be applied to realize, for example, highly sensitive near-field or rotation sensors. We then generalize to a time-dependent model, which predicts different types of dynamical behavior, including oscillatory regimes that could enable Kerr-nonlinearity-driven all-optical oscillators. The physics of our model can be applied to other systems featuring Kerr-type interaction between two distinct modes, such as for light of opposite circular polarization in nonlinear resonators, which are commonly described by coupled Lugiato-Lefever equations

Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 2 Infection in Albania

This is the very first study undertaken in Albania, to investigate the presence of the HIV-2 infection as a co-infection with HIV-1, in sera samples at the national reference laboratory of HIV/AIDS. The seroprevalence of HIV-2 was evaluated in 260 sera samples, that were confirmed with HIV-1, preserved in -20 degree, were tested for HIV-2. Diagnosis of the HIV-2 infection was done through the identification of specific antibodies with serologic method. All these samples have been tested with the rapid imunocromatographic test, HEXAGON HIV of the third generation for the identification of antibodies against HIV 1 and HIV 2 (Human Germany). From the 260 sera samples HIV-1 positive that have been tested for the HIV-2, 8.85% resulted positive for the HIV-2 infection. Persons infected only with HIV-2 have not been discovered yet in Albania. There is an interesting data that 87% of the samples positive to HIV-2 correspond to males and most of these persons have acquired HIV infection abroad. Having said that, considering also that most of the Albanian males have emigrated for economic reasons, without their regular sexual partner, these vulnerability factors have driven towards adopting risky behaviors to acquire HIV-1 and HIV-2 as a co-infection.Keywords: Albania, HIV-2, infection, diagnosis, seroprevalence